HEAVY SNOWS BURY COLORADO BOYCOTT

The snow has been glorious this season, the best in a decade, and the ski runs, lifts and hotels were packed all winter.

The celebrities were back, too. Jack was here for the holidays, as usual, and Goldie and Arnold and Don and Melanie and Cher, even if Barbra and Whoopie and Liza stayed away.

Glowing revelers toasting a blinding snowstorm packed the Apres Ski Bar at the new Ritz-Carlton Hotel, and the Skiers Chalet Steakhouse, a solid kind of family place that does not go in for fads, was out of its special T-bone by 8 p.m.

Amtrak's daily train across the Rockies was booked solid three successive days last week, and, for the first time in years, ski operators across the state plan to keep some slopes open late this season to meet demand.

In this glittering winter playground of the stars, the national effort to boycott Colorado for voter approval of an anti-gay-rights measure last fall was buried in an avalanche of profits this ski season.

"When we have great snow, we tend to have a great year. This year we had tremendous snow," said Dave Walbert, 46, owner of the Red Onion, the 19th Century saloon where business was up 13 percent this winter. "I don't see the boycott as having hurt business in Aspen at all."

Typical of those flooding the Rockies this year was Pam Sedillo, 26, of Albuquerque. "I didn't agree with what they did in passing that law," she said after a sunny morning on the Aspen Mountain slopes. "But why should that stop me from coming here and skiing?"

Away from the ski lifts, the boycott mounted by homosexual rights groups has been felt, but so far it does not constitute a threat to Colorado's resurgent economy.

Estimates by Boycott Colorado, the effort's organizers, of $70 million in losses over the next five years are seen so far as insignificant amid the state's $75 billion economy. Nonetheless, the boycott remains a source of concern to politicians and business leaders who have redoubled their efforts to distance themselves from passage of the ballot measure, known as Amendment 2, that bans laws protecting homosexuals from discrimination.

"It's tarnished our image, but the economic effect of the boycott is negligible so far," said John Huggins, director of Denver Mayor Wellington Webb's economic development office. "What's hard to know is the future impact."

For now, Amendment 2 is in limbo, suspended in January by a state judge. The Colorado Supreme Court is set to hear arguments regarding the measure's constitutionality later this spring.

Jean Anderson, spokeswoman for the Denver Tourist and Convention Bureau, said 23 convention groups had canceled plans to hold meetings in the Mile High City between now and 1998, resulting in $33.8 million in lost business.

But the city will see more than $3 billion in convention business over the same period, she said, so the boycott represents roughly 1 percent of that total.

Boycott organizers dispute those figures but concede the direct impact is difficult to gauge. They say their movement is growing, endorsed by 15 municipalities from San Francisco to Chicago to New York, many labor unions and an increasing number of other groups that do not represent gays and lesbians.

They range from filmmakers who canceled plans to film a Stephen King movie in Boulder this summer to the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, which shelved plans to hold its annual convention in Denver this week.

"The numbers might not be felt immediately," said Terry Schleder, president of Boycott Colorado Inc. in Denver. "The people who came this winter booked their reservations a year ago. We probably aren't going to know the impact of the boycott until after another ski season."

The Greater Denver Chamber of Commerce, the state's largest business association, found in a recent survey that two-thirds of its 3,500 members believe Colorado's image and economy will be damaged by Amendment 2.

Officials from Denver, Boulder and Aspen stress that their communities voted heavily against Amendment 2 and have their own ordinances banning discrimination against gays.

Denver boosters have purchased ads in national magazines to promote Colorado's charms. Their effort has been helped at times by boycott promoters' heavy-handed tactics, particularly the attempt to pressure Celestial Seasonings, the Boulder-based tea company.

Chief executive Mo Siegel said the boycott's organizers demanded his company finance the boycott efforts, lobby other business leaders and contribute $100,000 to the boycott campaign or face the prospect it would be targeted for a "tea party"-dumping of its product in the East River-and other action.

Siegel refused, denouncing the demands as blackmail. But it's a sign of the sensitivity to the overall issue that Celestial stresses that its policies ban discrimination against homosexuals.